


Fires Off the Shoulder of Orion

by droideka



Series: Semper Fidelis [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-13 22:20:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5719126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/droideka/pseuds/droideka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Alliance resurrects Commander Shepard in secret, placing her at the center of the growing rift between humanity and the rest of the council races. Under orders from the Alliance's enigmatic intelligence arm, Shepard must find a way to cross the Omega-4 relay and end the Collector threat. Loyalties are tested when a plot that threatens the tenuous galactic peace is revealed, and Shepard must unite a distrustful galaxy to face the coming Reapers.</p><p>An AU where Cerberus exists as part of the Alliance, and Shepard is forced to reconcile her loyalty to her people and her duty to the galaxy.</p><p>Set during the events of Mass Effect 2<br/>Rated for language, violence, and gore. Rating will be bumped in later chapters.<br/>*NOTE: this work is undergoing some serious revisions. New chapters to resume soon!*</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Cosmic Fugue

The FTL drive disengaged, and the _Normandy_ slipped out of its mass effect envelope in a flare of blue shifted light. The ship gave a sickening lurch as the vessel and all aboard returned to a spacetime where physics still obeyed Einsteinian laws. But Shepard had made so many jumps on so many ships that the rolling of the floor beneath her didn’t even break her stride. She made an impressive figure cutting across the crew deck, moving effortlessly in 30 kilograms of gear with her helmet tucked under her arm. Her dark hair was cropped close to her scalp, and it gleamed like polished armor under the ship’s harsh lights. Her full lips were quirked to the side, her dark, angular eyes were narrowed, and her wide jaw was set in a hard line – the face Shepard made when she was thinking about something. About what, nobody could ever really be sure. She received a crisp salute from a fresh ensign, and she gave one in return. But even after only a few weeks aboard the _Normandy_ , the ensign knew better than to interrupt Shepard when she had that look on her face, no matter how informal or agreeable the Commander was on her rounds.

Shepard was just under one and a half meters tall with the added height of her boots; short for a shock trooper. But something about her made people believe she was much taller than she really was. Common crew estimates had pegged her somewhere between Wrex and Garrus, both of whom towered over her at over two meters tall. Maybe it was the military posture, drilled into her over years of service: back straight, chin up, feet apart. Maybe it was the confidence of her movements, or the challenge in her stare. Maybe it was cognitive dissonance. Not everyone thought “Savior of the Citadel” and pictured a short woman with a bad temper.

Whatever it was, it was enough to make people believe she could stand toe-to-toe with a krogan and spit in his eye.

The saluting ensign retreated to a respectful distance.

The flat of Shepard’s fist connected with the elevator’s call button with unnecessary force.

The _Normandy_ had been sweeping the Omega nebula for four days now, looking for any sign of the geth holdouts they’d been sent to eliminate. There had been nothing so far, but Shepard had still insisted that the ground team be ready to deploy on approach. Sovereign was gone, but the geth network was still intact. The few pockets of resistance they’d encountered were still organized enough to be dangerous. Shepard wanted to maintain the element of surprise as much as she could when dealing with geth, and that meant being ready to go at a moment’s notice.

And therein lay the problem. Joker had not been subtle about his disapproval of her presence in his cockpit. His exact words had been “helicopter parent,” and “go away.” So she had spent the last three days in the cargo hold, staring sullenly at the Mako between assembling and disassembling her equipment.

Her patience was beginning to fray.

In the weeks that followed Sovereign’s attack on the Citadel, the Council had sent her up and down every backwater system in the Terminus. Presumably to track down and destroy Saren’s remaining geth forces. No doubt to put as many light years between the new hero of the Citadel and every news crew in the galaxy. Neither the Council nor the Alliance brass particularly enjoyed Shepard’s media presence, since she was never content to open her mouth without firmly inserting her own foot into it. What was the likelihood she’d be able to run her mouth off at al-Jilani in the Terminus? _Wait, no_ , she admonished, _don’t tempt fate._

Escaping from the media shitstorm that formed in the wake of the battle had been a tempting prospect, at first. The media song and dance was something that Shepard had no patience for. Never had. She’d spent her fifteen minutes of fame in the aftermath of Akuze in a hospital bed, recently anesthetized and half delirious from pain. She had managed to give the press a sound bite her superiors would be happy to see floating around the extranet – something about duty and sacrifice and everyday heroism – but she attributed her success to the opiate derivatives rather than any kind of knack for public speaking. Thankfully there had been no follow-up. There were a few blurbs after the memorial went up, but nobody had been inclined to ask for her thoughts about it. All of which had suited her just fine.

After her appointment as a Spectre, there had been a few think pieces about humanity’s expanding role in galactic politics, accompanied by a list of her accomplishments and an unflattering post-enlistment photograph. Nothing she couldn’t handle, but things didn’t go smoothly for much longer. Who could forget her disastrous first interview with al-Jilani? The fallout from that was mostly contained within her conservative audience, but Hackett hadn’t been pleased. Shepard was just relieved that she hadn’t punched al-Jilani in the face… though the thought had crossed her mind ( _repeatedly, and with vivid detail_ ).

But none of this could possibly compare to the sheer scale of her notoriety now. Her face was everywhere. That same damn unflattering post-enlistment photo was now on every screen in the Citadel, COMMANDER JANE SHEPARD scrolling beneath it in every language spoken in the Wards. Her voice echoed in every corridor, endlessly repeating with a confidence she did not feel, “The Reapers are coming. But we killed one of them. We can kill the rest.”

At least all of that was better than the garbage sitting in her inbox, gleefully forwarded to her from Joker. Extranet biopics skirting the truth just enough to bypass copyright law. Speculations about her mental fitness. Conspiracy theories with her at the center of the Council’s machinations. Salacious accounts of her love life ( _who is this Commander Shepard and how is she getting laid with such frequency?_ she had wondered). Accusations of xenophilia, with varying degrees of vitriol and vulgarity… the list went on. Where Joker had gotten them all, she didn’t particularly care to know.

Hunting geth had seemed like a welcome distraction. So why was she so anxious to get back?

The elevator chimed, putting an end to that train of thought; but her anxiety lingered. Already she was sidling through the partially opened doors, overwhelmed by a sudden need to check her equipment. Nevermind that yesterday she had cleaned, balanced, and calibrated every piece of weaponry she owned. By the time the doors had fully opened she was poking impatiently at the controls, urging the elevator down to the shuttle bay.

Taking advantage of the brief reprieve from the crew’s constant respectful attention, she let her body slump against the wall, her head resting on the cool metal of the elevator’s interior. Shepard could hear the hum of the engines even through the walls of the elevator, but still it felt too quiet.

Nobody to shoot the shit with. No cross-species sharing to fill the silence.

_If I had my team –_

Shepard let that thought die on the vine. The fact of the matter was that they weren’t here. They couldn’t stay. She may still be on the Council’s payroll, but none of them were. She shouldn’t begrudge them that.

But there was a lot of distance between ‘should’ and ‘could.’

It hadn’t seemed right to keep Wrex away from Tuchanka after what happened on Virmire. Not that anything Shepard could do or say would ever fully dissuade the krogan from anything after he’d made up his mind. So she didn’t ask him to stay. Garrus had reapplied for Spectre training. And, putting aside her distaste for paperwork and red tape, Shepard had submitted a formal letter of recommendation to the Council on his behalf. It was what he had always wanted, so she wished him well. Tali still had family and friends waiting for her back in the Flotilla, not to mention a pretty spectacular Pilgrimage gift to deliver. She had practically bubbled over in excitement at the Citadel docks, watching the ships come and go and waiting to catch sight of the one that would take her home. Tali had made Shepard swear to keep in touch. Tali’s insistence reminded Shepard of the pinky promises she had sworn to her friends as a child, and it made her smile. She hugged the quarian and sent her on her way with a solemn oath to send her updates on the weekly extranet bursts. Liara had returned to her research with renewed vigor. If the Reapers were coming, she was determined to learn all that she could from what the Protheans had left behind. Shepard missed her, but Liara had been right when she said that it was where she needed to be. Of everyone, only Ashley had stayed. And while she was grateful for her company, the _Normandy_ still felt empty without the rest of her team.

Some crew members had been happy to see all the aliens go.  Not everyone in the Alliance had shared her views about cooperating with aliens. _Hence the ‘loving parody’ spread in Fornax_ , she thought with particular venom.

A single blast from the klaxon over the comm startled her out of her thoughts. “Cruiser of unknown make and origin has locked in an intercept trajectory,” the VI said pleasantly. “Approaching from coordinates –” _An intercept?_ She straightened. _That can’t be –_

The ship banked hard to starboard before Joker’s warning ever registered. Shepard lost her balance, and her armored shoulder hit the wall of the elevator. She pushed herself up, only to be thrown to the other side as the _Normandy_ reeled beneath her feet.

Beneath the screaming of the klaxon, Shepard could hear the shouts of the crewmen outside. Explosions rocked through the ship, some distant enough that they sounded like dull thuds, others so close Shepard could hear the shearing of the metal bulkheads. She struggled to her feet, half-falling into the elevator doors. The elevator would have locked down after the first hit, so she couldn’t have gotten far. For once she was grateful that the thing was damnably slow.

She jammed her fingers into the seam between the elevator doors, planted her feet and strained to pull it open from the side. The servos in her hardsuit’s exoskeleton whined at the exertion, but with a hiss the hydraulic locks gave and the door cracked open.

The crew deck was unrecognizable. Everything that hadn’t been bolted down was overturned or strewn across the floor. Consoles sputtered and sparked, and their wire guts hung loose from the ceilings and walls. Panels cracked and buckled before exploding out of their settings. Electrical fires bathed everything in an eerie orange light. Shepard could hear the moaning of the bulkheads even under the roar of the overtaxed engines. Crewmen were clamoring to extinguish fires as the ship literally fell to pieces around them.

“Give me a status report!” She shouted her command in the vague direction of the nearest terminal, but the VI’s answer came from further down the crewdeck. She staggered toward it, all the way past the sleeper pods, riding the ship’s tremors and rolls.

“– integrity is holding at 14%. Kinetic barriers have lost power. Weapon systems are offline. Mass effect core shielding is holding at 31% effective power. Hull breaches detected on decks 1, 2, and 3, sectors –”

Another explosion ripped through the ship, throwing Shepard forward onto the VI’s console.

 _This is no geth ship,_ she thought.

“-ccomend immediate disengagement and repair. The nearest Alliance dry dock is located –”

“Give me shipwide comms!” she interrupted.

“Aye, Commander.”

Shepard  leaned over the console, shouted into the input to be heard over the chaos around her. “This is Commander Shepard.” Distantly, she could hear the reverberations of her own voice in the other decks. “I’m ordering a general evacuation. Abandon ship. Everyone get to the evac shuttles.” She braced against the console as another explosion shook the deck. “Don’t take any chances. Get in the shuttles and run like hell. Shepard out.”

She directed her next order at the VI console. “Start prepping the distress beacon. Load up any information you can about that cruiser.”

“Aye, Commander.”

Shepard looked over her shoulder and instinctively raised an arm as a panel shot off the wall behind her in a belch of fire. Through the haze, she could see the crewmen running toward the evac shuttles. She refocused on the console, tapping out a hasty message to piggyback on the beacon. Hell if she was going to let this cruiser hit their rescue party.

“Life support systems have failed,” the VI chimed. Shepard sucked in a breath through her teeth, let it out in a curse. She pulled her eyes from the console, and with an efficiency of movement that spoke of hours of practice she slid her helmet over her head and engaged the environmental seals, checking each of them with her fingers. Her visor’s HUD flashed into life, and a stream of information and dozens of environmental warnings filled her vision as a connection was established between it and her hardsuit’s computer. She dismissed the warnings with an impatient flick of her eye and bent back over the console.

“Shepard!”

A little blue dot appeared on her radar. GyC. Williams, A.

“Ash,” she said, without turning to look at her. “Is everyone off the ship?”

“Not yet. There are still some stragglers on the lower decks.”

“All living crewmembers on deck 2 have been evacuated. Enemy fire has rendered the shuttle on deck 3 inoperative. The crew has been diverted to deck 2,” the VI said helpfully.

_Dammit._

“What about the bridge?”

“The bridge shuttle has not been launched.”

_Dammit!_

“Joker’s still in the cockpit, he won’t abandon ship,” Ashley said, by way of explanation. There was heavy silence on the line. “I’m not leaving either.”

“Ashley, listen to me.” She turned to her then, put her hands on her shoulders. “I need you to go down to the lower decks and get the crew onto those evac shuttles.” She moved past her to open a locker in the bulkhead. “I’ll  take care of Joker.”

“Commander –”

“Ashley, go. _Now._ ”

“I… Aye-aye.”

Shepard listened to her retreating footsteps before returning her attention to the open locker. She cleared away the other contents and pulled out a length of nanofiber cable. She attached the magnetic clasp to the back of her hardsuit and slung the coil over her shoulder before turning back toward the burning crewdeck.

“Launch the beacon,” she ordered.

“Aye, Commander. Beacon has been launched.”

“Okay,” she breathed, more for her own benefit than the VI’s. “Let’s go get Joker.”

The _Normandy_ shuddered beneath her feet, struggling to maintain a steady course as systems continued to go offline. Joker was still on the comm, broadcasting a desperate mayday. She set her teeth as another panel burst out of its frame only a few centimeters in front of her.

She sprinted the rest of the way across the crewdeck and up the stairs to the CIC. With each step up the stairs, she could feel the mass effect fields that generated the a-grav grow weaker.

“Commander, deck 1 has lost environmental functioning. Opening this door will depressurize this compartment,” the VI spoke into her ear.

“Has Chief Williams gotten everyone off the ship?

“She and the remaining crew have been evacuated.”

“Well.” She shrugged off the coil of cable, looped it around the railing on the most secure-looking bulkhead. “That would make this a one-way trip, then. Override and open the doors.”

“Aye, Commander.”

There was a hiss of hydraulics, a roar of rushing air, and then nothing at all as the last of the ship’s atmo rushed into space. The deck was plunged into darkness as all of the fires were extinguished. Only a sliver of light from the crack in the doors illuminated the dim stairwell. Her ragged breathing filled her ears, too loud. She slid her fingers into the crack in the door. It parted easily, and soon the sliver widened into a wall of light. For a moment, she was blinded.

It took her visor all of a second to polarize. Shepard blinked hard to try and clear her vision of artifacts and was only semi successful. The planet above was a mass of harsh white light, filling the shattered remains of the CIC with twisted shadows. She braced herself against the doors, planted her feet firmly on the floor. Her whole body wound tight as a spring, then released as she propelled herself forward through the door and into the wreckage.

Reaching out to take a hold of the railing that had surrounded the galaxy map, she pulled herself flush to the bank of central consoles. Hand over hand she climbed over the ruined consoles, letting the cable unwind behind her. Her vision had narrowed to the next handhold, her mind had settled into an unnerving quiet. Instinct would guide her.

When she reached the end of the bank of terminals, she disengaged the magnetic seal and reeled the cable in, re-securing the clamp before kicking off toward the cockpit and letting inertia carry her the rest of the way.

A flickering mass effect field partitioned the cockpit from the rest of the CIC, holding in what little atmo was left on the deck. She slipped through the field and was immediately assaulted by the roar of the collapsing ship. She reached out a hand to catch the back of the pilot’s seat. “Joker,” she called, “we have to go.”

He didn’t answer her. His hands were still moving over the haptic interface, faster than she’d ever seen. She touched his shoulder. “Joker –”

“No!” The sound exploded out of him, but his wide eyes were still fixed on his console “I won’t abandon the _Normandy_! I can still save her!” The color had drained from his face. “I can still –”

Over her shoulder, she could see the cruiser looming. It was massive. It looked more like a small asteroid than any kind of ship she’d ever seen. There was a point of light growing at its bow, a pinprick of orange that grew into a beam. In the pocket of atmo, she could hear the scream of metal shearing as the beam cut through the deck behind her.

The knife strapped to her thigh was in her hand, and before Joker could protest she had sliced evenly through the straps of his flight harness. Her fist closed around his thin arm, and she hauled him out of the chair. His scream of pain barely registered, but the unpleasant give of bone breaking under her fingers did. She wrapped an arm around his middle, and kicked off toward the bridge’s small 4 person shuttle.

She had only just settled him into a seat – _like a toddler,_ she thought inanely – when she turned her head upward just in time to see the growing light from the cruiser. The beam cut through the armor, the hull, and then through half of her outstretched arm before it punched a hole through the deck beneath her feet.

Her armor boiled away almost instantly. Shepard felt searing pain and then, more disturbingly, nothing at all. She must have cried out, but she couldn’t recall. All she could remember hearing was the rush of blood in her ears as she was thrown across the cockpit.

Her back hit the wall. She felt something shatter. With her good arm, she grabbed a fistful of hanging wires. She tried to push off with her legs and found that she couldn’t.

“Launch the shuttle!” she screamed.

“Commander –” the VI began.

“I said launch the fucking shuttle!”

She caught a glimpse of Joker’s face as the shuttle doors closed. _God, he’ll never forgive me for this._ But the mass effect partition flickered and died just as the shuttle launched. _See that you fucking idiot? You’d be boiling right now if I hadn’t –_

When the mass effect core blew, it sent a wave of energy through the wrecked ship. Shepard felt the familiar sizzle of the eezo in her nerves, the humming in her ears. The sizzle grew to a burn, and the hum to a roar as the wave passed over her. Her body was thrown clear of the wreck from the force of it.

She was tumbling end over end when she came to, her hand reaching and grasping into the darkness of space. The wreckage of the _Normandy_ was already falling around her, flaring alight as the pieces hit the planet’s atmosphere.

 _Alchera._ The word was caught in the forefront of her thoughts. _The planet is called Alchera. Alchera._

Her face turned toward the planet, and even through her polarized visor she was stunned by its brilliance. Her vision was filled with the sight of it, impossibly bright. She was falling toward it, falling into the expanse of searing light.

The pain in her lungs felt like fire. That light grew all around her, found its way insider, and it set her afire.


	2. The Southern Cross

_She dreams of the ocean._

_She dreams she is standing on the edge of it, and her feet are bare in the sand. Her boots are dangling by their laces on her finger, and she lets them fall just beyond the water’s reach. She takes a step and the cold waves lap over her toes. Her skin prickles but she doesn’t move, lets the ocean wash over her until her skin is numb. Someone is calling her name, and the sound urges her to hurry. She keeps walking until the waves are climbing her thighs, soaking her denim jeans._

_She lifts her gaze, up to the horizon where the ocean meets the sky. It’s so smooth she cannot see where one ends and one begins. She realizes that the waves have stopped coming, and the ocean has gone completely still. She can see every star reflected in its surface, impossibly bright._

_Someone is calling her name, and she knows she needs to go. The ocean is rising around her, and the stars are growing brighter. Every step sends a ripple through the smooth surface of the water, causing the stars to flicker like candle flames. The water is at her breast now and it’s cold, so cold._

_The ocean floor goes out beneath her on her next step, and she throws her head back as she falls. The stars have set the sky afire, scorching away the darkness. She watches the sky split and blister, watches the flames spread until there’s no darkness left at all. It’s just an endless expanse of blazing white, swallowing everything._

_Someone is calling her name, but she’s gone. She’s gone. The ocean sinks into her clothes, into her skin, into her lungs. It hurts so much, but she’s gone. She’s gone._

_She’s drowning, and it feels so much like crying._

_She feels a hand on her neck. It grabs a fistful of her collar, pulls. The water swirls around them both, and the waves have returned with all the fury of the ocean. She breaks the surface and the air is cold, so cold on her skin. Her mouth opens and she’s choking, coughing hard until the water runs out of her mouth and down her face._

_She’s gasping, she’s breathing –_

“Oh my god, Miranda. I think she’s waking up.”


	3. Soon I Will Be A Smiling Woman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Shepard wakes, it is in the wreckage of a body she once knew. Desperate for answers, she must escape the facility that held her and find the people that revived her. 
> 
> Content warnings for medical horror and body horror.

Shepard awoke with a sickening sense of dread.

The sound of her own breathing was loud in her ears, deep and even. The unease she felt was pushing her to stir, but her mind was still slow with sleep. Her eyes creaked open, then shut tight against the stinging light in her face. Everything was too bright, and it hurt. She was reminded of that blazing white expanse from her dream.

_Alchera._

The word passed through her hazy thoughts, but it meant nothing to her.

Like falling from a great height, that sense of apprehension kept growing.

She kept her eyes closed and tried to listen.

An electric hum filled the entire room, and even when she concentrated she couldn’t pinpoint any single source of the sound. Distantly, she could hear the electronic stutter of a computer. A pneumatic wheeze punctuated the electric droning and the rhythmic _thud_ of her heartbeat.

She forced her eyes open again.

A dozen robotic arms were suspended above her, a tangle of limbs all emerging from a wide nested dome. To her side she could see the thin, snaking tubing of an intravenous drip.

_A hospital?_

There were a few machines crowded around her, but the rest of the room was largely empty. A window that looked into a darkened room was set into the wall to her right. For observation, if this was a surgical suite as she was beginning to suspect. The wall to her left was dominated by a bank of consoles, showing the status of the machines as well as her vitals. And in the center – she felt her breath hitch when she saw it – there was an overhead view of her naked body, lying restrained on the operating table.

Her head had been shaved – only a few weeks ago, judging by the length of her hair. The gaunt lines of her face and her sunken eyes gave her the impression that she had been here for much longer than that. But even beneath the soft layer of new growth, she could see the lines of new scars on her scalp. The faded marks of microincisions cobwebbed across her abdomen, intersecting with the harsh parallel lines of her protruding ribs. Her limbs were branded with long, fresh scars that branched and narrowed to follow the curve of her fingers and toes; the exception being her right arm, which was a mottled patchwork of pale skin and raw tissue.

With the force of a long fall to the hard ground, that feeling of dread grew into tightly wound fear.

Shepard flexed her fingers, and then curled them into a tight fist. She tested the restraints. Sturdy metal, locked together with a magnetic clasp. Designed to withstand the struggling of an uncooperative patient, she thought with gritted teeth. The release was probably somewhere in the observation room. She craned her neck to look through the window, but the room was still dark.

The whirring sound of the surgical suite kicking into life made her head snap back.

Above her, the arms were twitching and stirring. She could hear the servos whining as their motions smoothed, arranging themselves around her like curious bystanders. Their metal fixtures caught the light as they moved, flashing rapidly under the harsh surgical lights. Her eyes darted to the bank of consoles on the opposite wall.

SURGERY, GENERAL: EXPLORATORY   
INITIALIZING >>>  
STANDBY >>>

All of that fear hit her now, and she was thrashing against the restraints, her fists beating the table in time. Every impact of her wrists against the metal cuffs sent shockwaves of pain up her arms, and with each successive strike she expected to hear the cracking of bone, but it never came.

One of the armatures swiveled toward her, paused over her face as if to contemplate her terror. Its mounted blade was small, but Shepard knew it was sharp enough to eviscerate her. Its mate joined it with a hum. As the sonic scalpel powered up, the electric humming turned into a sonic scream.

The pair slid on their tracks to hover over her chest, the first arm lowering itself into a ready position. Shepard’s neck strained as she arched her back, the shackle digging into her hand as she tried to pull herself free.

She bit back a scream as the knife sliced her skin.

She felt the sizzling in her nerves before she saw the biotic flash, accelerating her fist through the restraint and toward the robotic armature. The arm wriggled under her grasp, sliding through her sweat-slicked fingers. Its blade bit into her palm, but she set her teeth and lunged for it again. Her short nails found purchase on the smooth casing, and with all of the strength she could muster she wrenched the armature from its socket, leaving behind a tangle of sparking wires. An alarm began to sound, and the rest of the arms retreated.

After she managed to crack open the other shackle, she fumbled with the cuffs at her ankles. Unable to wedge her fingers into the seams, she kicked hard until the seals gave.

A graceless roll off the table had her sprawling on the cold floor, tangled in her IV wire. When she tried to stand, she fell helplessly back to the ground. She lay panting on the tiled floor, her nervous system buzzing and muscles burning from the sudden exertion.

As she raised herself on trembling arms, her wounded hand left a smear of blood on the immaculate floor.

_Shit._

She lifted her head toward the other room. There was an aid station near the door.

Wobbling dangerously, she managed to cross the room with her IV in tow. Her hands shook as she fumbled with the aid station’s plastic catch. There was no care or forethought in the way she rifled through the station’s contents, pushing aside the analgesics and antihistamines until they clattered to the ground. When she’d found what she was looking for she sank to the floor again, her back propped against the wall.

The plastic packaging rattled in her hands as she tore it open with her teeth. Grunting with pain, Shepard pressed the blunted tip of the applicator into her wound and squeezed the release. The medigel spread easily across her palm before becoming tacky on her fingers.

Much as she relished the thought of beating her captors to death with her IV stand, she couldn’t afford to haul it around. Shepard was sure her combat medicine instructor would probably roll over in his grave if he knew what she was about to do, but she found herself doing it anyway. Trying and failing to steady her hands, she gingerly removed her IV. Then, pressing two fingers to her arm with as much pressure her tired muscles could generate, she spread more medigel over the wound. Never one to take chances, she bound it with the roll of gauze bandages in her lap. Bleeding out after tearing out an IV would only be marginally better than an automated vivisection.

Leaning heavily on the aid station, Shepard pulled herself upright. When she tried the door, it was locked.

_Of course._

She scanned the room for another exit, and her eyes fell on the darkened window. Before she was even fully aware of what she was doing, she had the IV stand in both hands, raised over her shoulder. Cracks shot out and across the glass from the force of her first blow. She reeled, but managed to stay upright. She raised the metal stand, brought it down again. The window buckled, but didn’t break. She raised it again. Her arms shuddered with the effort, and her muscles were screaming beneath the roaring in her ears. She lost her grip on the stand as it crashed through the pane of glass and into the observation room beyond.

Stepping around the stray shards of glass on the floor, Shepard peered into the next room. Beneath the window she had just smashed was a bench filled with powered down consoles. From her vantage point in the surgical suite, the only way in or out of the room was an elevator on the far side.

Shepard contemplated her bare feet and grimaced. There was a fine coating of glass spread over the lab bench and most of the floor. Using what was left of the gauze bandages, she wrapped her hands and feet, then swept the IV stand along the bottom edge of the window, clearing as much of the broken glass as she could before testing the surface with her wrapped hand. 

After the herculean effort to free herself, it was a challenge just climbing that one meter through the window. When her legs felt like giving out, she let herself fall over the edge, rolling across the bench and onto the floor of the next room.

Ignoring the flashes of pain on her arms and legs where the glass had bit into her skin, she staggered back to her feet and picked her way across the room through the broken glass.

There were a few vents pumping cool air into the room, but all of them looked too small to climb through. And if that elevator really was the only way out of this lab, she could hazard a guess and say that those vents went directly up to the surface of this godforsaken facility. Shepard doubted she had the strength to climb through another window, let alone straight up through a vent.

Though the element of surprise was undoubtedly lost, considering the smashed window and the low alarms still blaring in the other room, Shepard took position on the side of the elevator, out of sight. She hit the call button and waited.

The doors slid open, spilling warm light into the darkened room. Shepard tensed. She counted to thirty before she rounded the corner, raising her fists.

__The only occupant was a corpse, propped up against wall and framed by a smear of its own blood.

Shepard edged around the pooling blood and crouched to examine it. Judging from the uniform and the gun on his hip, she guessed the man must have worked security. He’d taken two, three shots before going down. But his sidearm was still holstered. She removed it and checked the heat sink – never fired.

A burst of static made her jump, almost losing her balance. Her dark eyes flicked to the radio pinned to the guard’s shoulder. A woman’s voice, thickly accented and tinny over the comm, addressed the dead guard: “- cility has been compromised… mechs… mal… ning. Converge on … position. Lazarus is all that matters.”

There was the sound of gunfire and another burst of static, then the line went dead.

_What the hell is Lazarus?_

Shepard took the guard’s gun. The familiar weight in her hand was a comfort, but only a small one. Shepard wasn’t going to kid herself. In this state, any firefight would end with her dead.

The elevator ride was long and unnaturally quiet. The doors opened to a security checkpoint that had previously been manned by two guards. The first was slumped backwards over his chair; the second was sprawled on the floor. Neither had drawn their weapons, though it looked like the second had made some kind of attempt. The first had three wounds in his chest, visible through his blood-soaked shirt. But the wounds were spread wide. Whoever shot him had done it with an unsteady hand.

Someone had killed at least three guards to access the surgical suite she’d nearly died in. That didn’t seem like coincidence. But the guards hadn’t put up any kind of resistance, which meant that it had to have been someone familiar, someone they didn’t expect.

_I need to get the fuck out of here_.

Shepard happily indulged that thought.

She crept through the halls of the facility, ears ringing in the silence. For a facility under attack, it was far too quiet. At every corner she expected something to accost her. Mechs, the remaining security forces, anything. But nothing came. It only unnerved her further.

Following the serpentine hallways brought her to what appeared to be the center of the facility: a large anteroom dominated by a reinforced glass wall that looked out into the darkness of space. The crumbling landscape of an icy asteroid spread out beneath the cold, distant light of the stars. The sight made a chill run down her spine, though she wasn’t sure why.

Shepard had woken up in an underground lab contained in a facility that had been built into the surface of an asteroid. Someone, somewhere, had a vested interest in keeping her – and whatever it was they had done to her – a secret. Her grip on the pistol tightened. Whoever they were, they’d be giving her answers through a mouthful of broken teeth when Shepard found them.

The pneumatic breath of a door opening made her duck back into the hallway she had come from. She listened to the heavy footfalls as they tracked across the anteroom, then the hiss of another door opening. Shepard leaned out of cover in time to see the door to one of the facility’s branching hallways close behind a retreating figure.

Shepard’s plan hadn’t developed much farther than ‘ _escape’_ and ‘ _avoid dying’._ Tailing the survivor and hoping they led her to an evac zone sounded like a better plan than wandering the facility until she ran into a mech patrol. The adrenaline rose in her blood as she followed the figure.

She padded silently through the hall on wrapped feet. The floor was cool to the touch, and suddenly Shepard was aware of the gooseflesh rising on her bare skin. Silence was heavy in the air, and the darkness grew deeper as Shepard moved through the empty hallways. She passed half a dozen darkened labs, some in disarray and some so pristine it was like they’d never been used.

Ahead, she could see the orange glow of a haptic interface. Shepard crept around the corner, gripping the pistol with white knuckles, and slipped into the open lab.

A man was hunched over a console on the other side, tapping at the holo interface and cursing under his breath. His bald white head gleamed in the light of the console, and Shepard couldn’t help but be reminded of her endless days of spit-and-polish in the corps. There was a sidearm on the bench beside him.

She pressed the barrel of her gun into the man’s back and his whole body jolted in answer.

“Turn around.” The sound of her own voice surprised her. It was low and quiet, hoarse from disuse. When the man did not immediately respond, she pressed the gun insistently into his back. “ _Now.”_

He turned. When he saw her, his shock was clear on his face. It was not an unreasonable reaction. Shepard looked like death, and she was naked as the day she was born. His mustache twitched as he searched for the words his mouth was trying to form.

“Shepard? You’re alive? But… how?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Actually,” Shepard moved toward him, and the man flinched away. “I’m betting your guess is gonna be a lot better than mine.”

 “I – I don’t know anything! I thought you were already dead! The mechs were shooting so I just ran! Please! I swear to god I don’t know anything!”

She interrupted his pleading. “Where am I?”

“In the Terminus! We’re – fuck, I don’t know – two, three hours away from Omega?”

_Omega? What the fuck am I doing in the Terminus?_

“What happened?”

“Someone…” He swallowed hard. “Someone hacked into the station’s security mainframe.” His wide eyes darted toward the door, then back to the gun pointed at his chest. “All the mechs went crazy, they started shooting everyone. I had to run!”

“Why?” Her voice was sharp. “Why would they attack this facility?”

The man’s eyes were wide when he met her harsh gaze. The answer seemed obvious. “To kill you.”

Shepard sucked in a breath through her teeth. _Of course._

“Why do they want to kill me _?_ ”

“I don’t know! I was just a medical tech, I had nothing to do with the politics!”

“If you’re a medical tech, then you know what they did to me.” She took another step toward him. She thought of the sonic scalpel, screaming in anticipation of her exposed bone. She thought of all her scars, spread over her abdomen like cracks in shattered glass. She thought of the raw, angry flesh of her mottled right arm. She thought of her hollow cheeks, and of the time she lost. The questions were burning within her, buoyed up on the heat of her anger.

“Bullshit. I think you do know. I think you know _exactly_ why they want to kill me. Is it because of something you did to me? Something I’m not supposed to know about? _Why?_ ”

She was crowding him into the console now, and the man shriveled under her gaze. His eyes flicked to the sidearm on the bench. Shepard grabbed a fistful of his shirt, hauled him forward. He raised his hands, and as the barrel of the gun pushed into his throat he made a horrified little noise. “I said: _why do they want to kill me?”_

_“I swear to god I don’t know!”_

The door opened, and Shepard heard another man’s voice. “Wilson!” it called. Yanking him by the collar, Shepard pulled the tech away from the console and between her and the door. Her arm went around his neck, tightened like a noose. The pistol went to his head, and the barrel dug unrelentingly into his temple.

_“Jacob. Help,”_ her hostage choked out.

The console threw orange light over his figure: tall and broad shouldered, with dark skin and strong features. Shepard knew from the way he moved – gun raised, no wasted movement – that he was military. In the light, she could see the recognition appear in the arch of his heavy brows. “Shepard,” he said, and lowered his weapon.

“Who are you?” she called out in as steady a voice as she could manage.

“My name is Jacob.” The man was edging closer to her. His gun was still lowered, but his eyes never left hers. “I’m the chief security officer of this facility. I’m here to help you.”

“Yeah? Good fucking work on that one.”

“This facility is compromised,” he continued, undeterred. “We need to get you out of here.”

Her hostage sucked in a gasp as the gun pushed mercilessly against his temple. “I’m not going anywhere until I get some answers!” she spat.

“Jacob,” he gasped. “She’s crazy. She’s not Shepard.”

“The _fuck_ do you mean I’m not Shepard?”

“She’s going to shoot me, Jacob!” He sounded hysterical.

“You expect me to just put a bullet in her head, Wilson? I’m not doing that.” The man raised his hands, pointing the gun to the ceiling. His dark eyes didn’t move from hers as he removed the thermal clip from his pistol and let it clatter to the ground between them. The tech groaned pathetically. “Like I said, we’re here to help you, Shepard.”

There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of Shepard’s ragged breathing. There was a subtle shake in the hand that held the pistol to Wilson’s head, and her chest brushed against his back with every inhale. Her strength was beginning to fail. But it couldn’t end here. Not now. Not before she asked the question that was burning like bile in the pit of her stomach.

“What did you do to me?”

“Ask him.” He inclined his head toward the man in her grasp. “Wilson was our chief medical tech. If you let him go I’m sure he’ll tell you everything.”

“ _Chief_ medical tech, huh?” Her captive made a strangled noise around her arm, but she didn’t ease her hold. “You were lying to me, Wilson.” He clawed at her arm, tried to break free. “ _Now tell me what you did._ ”

“ _Jacob!”_

“She deserves to know, Wilson.”

“ _Tell me what you did to me!”_

Wilson’s bald head was turning scarlet in her chokehold, beads of perspiration standing out against his shiny forehead. He shouted out his answer. “ _We brought you back!_ ”

“Back? From where?” She got no reply from Wilson, who was gasping quite pitifully now. “ _Where?”_

It was Jacob who answered her, in a somber tone tinged with something that could have been sympathy. “From the dead, Shepard.”

Her grip on Wilson’s neck slackened.

“Dead.” Her voice cracked when she said it.

“The _Normandy_ was attacked by an unknown enemy in the Amada system. You were killed, and the ship was destroyed over –”

“Alchera,” she finished.

“That’s right,” he said quietly.

“My crew… what happened to my crew?”

“They’re safe. There were a few crewmen who didn’t survive the initial attack, but everyone else made it out okay.”

“Does the Alliance know I’m alive?”

“We are Alliance.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Jacob.” Her voice was low and threatening, little more than a growl.

“I’m not lying to you, Shepard.”

“That’s _bullshit_!” she snapped back. “The Alliance doesn’t operate in the Terminus, so you better tell me who the _fuck_ you are!”

“We brought you back from the dead, Shepard. You really think whoever killed wouldn’t try again? We did what we could to keep you safe. This facility was top of the line, highly classified. And now it’s gone to shit.”

There was another long pause as Shepard considered what Jacob had said. Her hand was visibly shaking now, and her legs were numb with fatigue. “I don’t believe you,” she breathed.

“Put the gun down, Shepard.” Jacob was moving toward her now, slowly, his hands upraised. “We can all walk out of here if you just let Wilson go.”

Shepard ground the muzzle of the gun into Wilson’s temple, and the loud, despairing moan he let out in response made Jacob stop midstep. “How can I trust you?”

The question was still hanging heavy in the air when the door opened. Shepard heard the sound of her boots as the woman’s figure crossed the lab. And just for a moment, as she stepped into the light of the console, Shepard saw the distaste on her lips before the woman raised the gun in her hand and fired.

Wilson’s blood spattered across her face, poured down the front of her bare chest. His body went limp against her, and they both toppled to the ground. Dazed, she managed to roll Wilson’s body off of her before trying and failing to stand.

Jacob was shouting. “Miranda! What are you _doing_ –”

The woman cut him off. “My job. Wilson was compromised, he betrayed us all.”

Jacob said nothing in reply. He only had to look into the woman’s eyes to know all he needed to. He stepped over Wilson’s crumpled body and moved to where Shepard lay, panting and trembling. She jerked away from his touch, reeling on her hands and knees.

“Taking hostages Shepard? That’s not like you.” The woman’s voice was low and thickly accented. Shepard recognized it as the voice she’d heard on the dead guard’s radio. Lifting her eyes to look past Jacob’s crouching form, she saw that the woman had holstered her pistol and was now regarding her coolly from across the room. Her hair was long and dark, her skin pale, and her blue eyes were bright and watchful.

A snarl split Shepard’s lips. “What the _hell_ do you know about me?”

The woman gave her a knowing smile. “More than you think.”

She turned toward the door. “We need to get out of here before they realize their operation has failed.” The woman spoke with an air of command that was effortless and cold, just like the way she’d shot her colleague. Ruthless and efficient. “They might send someone to make sure you’re really dead this time.”

“And what makes you think I’ll come with you?”

The woman stopped in the doorway, then answered over her shoulder. “Because you have questions, and I have answers.”

“I was asking him questions.” She gave a feeble nod at Wilson’s body. “You killed him before he could answer any of them.”

“I’ve spent two years of my life bringing you back from the dead, Shepard.” The woman matched her gaze. “I’m not about to shoot you in the back now.”

“Two –” Shepard felt all the breath leave her body with the force of a heavy blow. The floor lurched beneath her hands. “Did you… did you say two years?”

“Like I said, Shepard. You have questions, and I have answers.”

A savage fury rose in her. What she would have given to have her strength back. What she would have done to get her answers. Her hands balled into fists on the ground beneath her shaking arms. In a gesture of familiarity – all too out of place – Jacob put a hand on her shoulder. She tried to pull away, and nearly fell prone into the spreading pool of Wilson’s blood. Only Jacob’s steadying hold on her arm kept her upright. She wrenched violently at his grip, but only managed to expend the very last of her body’s strength. She hung off his arm, panting with exertion, and let out a low, frustrated noise.

“Shepard,” he said. The gentleness of his tone surprised her. “You have my word that no one’s going to hurt you.” She heard the jingling of metal, then Jacob offered her his other hand. In his brown palm, she saw a set of dog tags, shining in the light of the console. “Soldier to soldier.”

They were Alliance.

But why? Why would the Alliance bring her back? Why would they keep her return a secret?

_None of this makes any fucking sense._

There was a long moment between them, the silence unbroken save for Shepard’s heavy breathing. After a while, she let her head hang low, and her arm went limp in his grip. Jacob pulled her to her feet and slung her arm over his broad shoulders. Together, they hobbled out of the lab.

The woman – Miranda – stood in the doorway, waiting. Shepard lifted her head to look at her as they paused outside the lab.

“You’re gonna tell me everything,” she said.

Miranda’s cold gaze was unwavering. “Yes, Shepard. I’ll tell you everything.”


	4. Timshel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following her harrowing escape, Shepard has questions but nobody seems to have answers. When the call comes for her to meet the illusive man behind her revival, Shepard is ready for answers. But she is unprepared for the question he has for her.
> 
> Content warnings for body horror, medical horror, self harm, and suicide.

Even over the growling guitars and booming bass playing through the old analog earphones, Shepard could hear her blood pounding in her ears. She kept her breathing tightly controlled, even breaths in and out. Her footfalls were just as deliberate. Her gaze never wavered from the track ahead of her, maintaining an intensity of focus that consumed her thoughts. Every step was made with purpose, with precision. She felt every shifting muscle, every point of pressure as she ran. She pushed her weight into the ground, felt the way it pushed back. First with her heel, then rolling forward onto the balls of her feet. She sprang forward on her toes, caught herself on the heel of the opposite foot. The music was still blaring in her ears, but it’s her footfalls that have her full attention. It kept her focused, kept her grounded.

As Shepard rounded the track, she caught sight of Jacob watching her. His arms were crossed over his chest, and his heavy brows were knit together in thought. As always, his beard and mustache were impeccably trimmed.  Shepard had collapsed not long after their confrontation, and had woken up slung over his broad shoulders in a fireman’s carry. He hadn’t been far from her since.

She let her eyes slide past him and picked up her pace.

It had taken her a week to be able to walk again. Two more to be able to run. After her harrowing escape, it was remarkable she was able to move at all. She had been scheduled to wake the day of the attack, but there would have been weeks of physical therapy and neurological testing between waking and actually moving. The Lazarus Project had no other subjects. No one was really sure how Shepard’s body would handle the strain of her new… parts.

_As it turns out, fear is a powerful motivator._

Miranda had assured her that she was doing well. That setbacks were “to be expected.” Shepard wasn’t sure what kind of setbacks she should expect, considering Miranda had shot the man who had rebuilt her.

She shook her head. _Rebuilt._

Anything that wasn’t destroyed had been restored, and anything that was had been replaced. And everything was improved.

Her shattered skeleton had been reconstructed and augmented, a fusion of titanium and bone. Her biotic amp had been upgraded and her nerves stripped and re-myelinated. Her muscles had been incubated and regrown in a chemical bath. Her organs had been cloned and replaced, free of the wounds of her ill spent youth. Hell, they had even given her new _skin_. The scars on her knuckles, the cigarette burns on her wrists, the freckles on her arms, even the tattoo on her back – all of it was gone. Replaced by a sanitized spread of lab grown flesh, marked with scars that ran along her limbs like seams on stockings.

It was hard not to feel like an incomplete imitation of the person she’d once been.

When Shepard rounded the track again, Jacob was still there. He jerked his head, beckoning her over. His mouth was moving as she slowed her pace. She pulled the buds from her ears. “What was that?”

“I said you’re looking good out there, Shepard.”

“Yeah? In N School I had to do twice that distance in half the time.” She passed a hand over her brow, letting it hover over her eyes before it fell back down to her side.

“I know you’re frustrated, but it’ll come to you.” He tried to sound encouraging.

“See but that’s the thing. It’s all in my head, I remember it. I just… I just can’t fucking _do_ it.”

The recovery team had found her brain in excellent condition. Better than they had dared to hope for, considering the circumstances of Shepard’s gruesome demise. Her memories, her experiences, they were all still there. The weeks she had spent answering questions about her elementary school teachers and N school classmates had confirmed it, but her body had been remade. Every motion was unfamiliar, and every sensation felt alien. “It will take time,” Miranda had said, her cold gaze steady, “for your brain and your body to synchronize.”

The word _‘synchronize’_ sounded much more dignified than the reality. Her first steps were as unsteady as a toddler’s. Her first venture out of bed had ended with her sprawled in a heap on the floor. One of her first exercises had been a simple game of catch that had begun with her taking a foam ball to the face, and ended with her instructor nursing a black eye. She tore pages out of books, shattered glasses in her hand. Eating was humiliating. Miranda had forbidden her from attempting to use her biotics, and with good reason. If not for the titanium mesh reinforcing her bones, Shepard would have easily broken her own arm the first time she defied her.

Jacob looked sympathetic. Shepard brushed past him, moving to her things.

“You got something to say? Or are you just here for moral support?” She lifted a water bottle to her lips.

“The Director wants to speak with you.” Shepard lowered the bottle, looked at him over the rim. “You’re stable. And from what we can tell, you’re the real deal, Shepard. It’s about time you got some answers from the man in charge.” He stood at attention, suddenly all military professionalism. “He’ll be calling through the QEC at 0500 hours Earth Standard. I have orders to make sure you’re ready.”

“The Director wants to speak to me. Personally?” She sounded incredulous.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Well,” Shepard tossed over her shoulder as she turned to leave. “Guess I better freshen up then, huh?”

Jacob didn’t follow, and Shepard gave thanks for small miracles.

Shepard set a quick pace to her quarters. The path was familiar, and her feet followed it without guidance. She hadn’t ventured beyond her quarters and the gymnasium since her first unsteady steps outside of the medical bay. There was little else to do other than train. Extranet signals were blocked on the station, and her caretakers hadn’t given her an omnitool.

Jacob had delivered a stack of bound paper books to her quarters in the first week, and even that had been a surprise.

“You don’t think I’ll beat my guard to death with one of these?” she had asked, thumbing through the one he’d tossed to her.

“Nah. If these were hardcover I might reconsider,” he had said, in his oddly familiar way.

But the books had been written centuries ago. Nothing that could clue her in to what had happened in the two years she had spent dead. It didn’t stop her from reading them all, though.

She passed a few of the researchers on the way, but none of them so much as looked at her. Probably under orders not to speak with her lest they give her any kind of privileged information. She had given up on trying to talk with them long ago, so she moved past them and entered her quarters.

On interplanetary installations like this one, space was always at a premium. Yet when she had been released from the medical bay, Shepard had been led to a rather spacious private cabin on the main deck. If it was to give her the illusion of normalcy, they had failed. Shepard had spent ten years of her life on ships, and had grown used to the cramped quarters. Even her old cabin on the _Normandy_ had been small, though at least as XO she didn’t have to share her bunk with another crewman. That had been one of the perks of command she had immediately enjoyed.

Shepard peeled off her sweaty clothes as she strode across the cabin on her way to the bathroom, averting her eyes from the mirror above the metal sink.

Her right arm was a patchwork horror of titanium bone and synthetic muscle, grafted skin stretched taught over the inhuman armature. Of everything, it was what disturbed her most. Her arm had been utterly destroyed during the attack, severed at the shoulder. It hadn’t been recovered. The thought of it floating disembodied over Alchera, spinning lazily in an endless pantomime, was enough to make her stomach turn.

The cold water on her face made her gasp. She turned from the spray and let the water roll down her shoulders and the backs of her legs.  Her skin prickled, and a shiver ran through her whole body. She let the cold sink into her overtaxed muscles, then groped for the shower handle.

She passed a hand through her hair, more out of habit than anything else. It was little more than two centimeters long, shaved off when the scientists had gone exploring in her brain. “Only to assess your faculties,” Miranda had assured her. Shepard wasn’t sure how much of Miranda’s assurances could be believed. She had been willing enough to answer her questions, but there was nothing that she could compare Miranda’s answers to. Her own crude examination of her body, and the limited access she had been given to her files, had only supported what Miranda had told her.

Jacob had not lied to her when he said they were part of the Alliance. The information had led to a line of questioning that Miranda had not been entirely pleased to answer.

Project Lazarus was under the jurisdiction of the Directorate of Military Intelligence and Homeland Security. Homeland, in the vernacular. If the Marine Corp and the Navy were the sword and shield of the Alliance, Homeland was the dagger behind its back. Initially formed as a safeguard against a colonist revolt, Homeland found new purpose during the First Contact War. It had been a team from Homeland that liberated Shanxi.

Shepard’s time in the Special Forces had given her limited contact with Homeland, primarily through their anti-piracy efforts in the Verge. But she didn’t know much. Only enough to know to stay the hell out of their way – nothing that would enlighten her to as to why they had chosen her, of all people, to bring back. She was a jarhead. A top notch fucking jarhead, but still. They could have raised a small army with the credits they’d spent on a single soldier.

“I don’t know why.” Miranda had answered, and for once Shepard was inclined to believe her. “It was my job to make sure Project Lazarus succeeded. I’ve done that, now the rest is between you and the Director.”

It seemed like it was about damn time she got some answers.

Shepard dressed in a set of clean Alliance blues, grimacing in the mirror as she did so. She unrolled her sleeves to cover her mottled right arm, and the long pants covered her mutilated legs. Six weeks of solid food had fleshed out her face, but the color hadn’t returned entirely to her cheeks. Her skin was pallid, drained of the warm golden hue she’d acquired from years spent in the suns of distant worlds. She could cover the scars on her body,  but nothing could cover the harrowed look in her eyes, or the pain etched into the lines of her face.

When she opened the door to her quarters, she was only mildly surprised to find Jacob waiting for her. He stood up straighter and saluted. She gave one in return, though she wasn’t sure how appropriate the gesture was. She didn’t remember any kind of protocol regarding the maintenance of rank after death.

“The QEC is on the upper deck,” he said. The “ _you need my clearance to get there”_ remained unspoken. She moved past him toward the elevators.

“Alright. Let’s go meet your boss.”

He keyed in his access code and then settled into a parade rest beside her. She had done the same, without thinking about it. She glanced over at him, then back to the door as the elevator began to move.

“You don’t strike me as the Homeland type, Mr. Taylor.”

“I wasn’t always with Homeland. I started out as a marine, like you.” He looked at her, and she met his gaze with an even expression. “A lot of us are ex-military. People who wanted to make a difference after the war.”

“Yeah? You weren’t making a difference as a marine?”

“Sitting with my thumb up my ass waiting for the Reapers to come through our front door? No.” There was a bitter edge to his voice, one that Shepard hadn’t heard before. “The Alliance –” He stopped as soon as he had begun, perhaps realizing that he was saying too much. He turned back toward the elevator doors. “I’m sorry, Commander. Maybe you should ask the Director about what’s happened since you’ve been gone.”

She watched him carefully, but his expression gave nothing away. She turned her eyes forward. “Maybe I will, then.”

The elevator doors opened to an expectant Miranda. She gave them both a cold once over before addressing them. “I’ve just delivered my report to the Director.” She cocked a hip, settling her hard gaze on Shepard. “He’s anxious to speak with you, Shepard.”

“The feeling’s mutual.” Shepard crossed her arms, meeting Miranda’s gaze. “Maybe now I can finally get some real answers.”

Miranda was unfazed. “The Director will answer any remaining questions you might have. The QEC is just through that door. We’ll wait for you here.”

The door opened, and Shepard swept her eyes around the room before stepping inside. The room beyond was bare walls and floor, remarkable only for the illuminated pad in the center. She turned on her heel when the door closed behind her with a hushed sound. Her eyes flicked back to the circle of light in the center of the room, and she approached it cautiously.

She tested the pad with the toe of her boot, and it brightened in reaction. An electric hum filled the room as the light continued to grow, making her turn her face away. A projected grid rose from the floor, enclosing her in a prison of light. The brightened pad under her feet began to fade, leaving only the light of the grid entrapping her.

As she turned around in the circle, the grid began to fill with color. Pinpricks of light spread and merged to form a coherent picture, spilling across boundaries like liquid on glass.

A cityscape stretched before her, glimmering like an expanse of stars under a twilight sky. Towers of metal and glass raked at the darkening sky, flashing with the light of the setting sun. A skeletal tower was surrounded by a circle of arching cranes, their heads bowed as if asleep. She could see the movement of the streets far below, dancing with light. A mountain ridge carved a swath of darkness through the lights of the city. Beyond the reach of the city’s towers, the ocean pressed against the sky. The horizon was ablaze with the light of dusk, all rich purples and vibrant reds, cut by the jagged lines of the city’s skyline. It was a sunset that was familiar to her. She reached out a hand, and the image shimmered beneath her touch like a fever dream.

“Commander Shepard.” A man’s voice said in greeting. “It’s good to see you.”

She turned from the cityscape to find herself in a darkened office. The light from the window filtered in behind her, bathing the room in orange light and casting long, arching shadows over the floor. The lean figure of a man moved through the shadows to stand just beyond the reach of the light. In the darkness, Shepard could see the spark of a cigarette being lit. The wavering light made the man’s face looked harsh and lined. His eyes were blue and bright, unnaturally so.

“I understand that you were born here, Shepard.” He took a long drag from his cigarette, and let the next sentence drift out on a plume of smoke. “How does it feel to return home?”

“I haven’t been home in almost ten years,” she answered, and her dark eyes drifted back to the city below. “I didn’t know Homeland kept offices in Honolulu.”

“We don’t,” the man admitted. He moved into the light of the sunset to stand beside her. He was well dressed in an Earth-fashion suit, rather than the ubiquitous asari style. His hair was dark, framed by a dignified grey at the temples. As he took another drag from his cigarette, the man looked contemplative. “But I have never known a more beautiful sunset.” He turned his blue eyes toward Shepard. “It’s something worth coming back to, wouldn’t you agree?”

She didn’t answer. The sun sank below the city’s skyline, and they were both left in darkness.

The cityscape dissolved before them, leaving the window empty. A single spot of light appeared in the center of the blackened surface, and grew gradually to fill her vision. The molten surface of a star raged before her, an unstable mass of red and orange flame. It cast an eerie light through the polarized glass, reflected off the gleaming tile and filling the room with shifting shadows. The sight of it chilled her to her core, but she kept her face impassive as the man addressed her.

“My name is Jack Harper. I am the Alliance’s director of military intelligence and homeland security. I’m sure you have questions for me.”

“I do.” She straightened reflexively, crossing her arms behind her back as she spoke. Her respectful attention almost softened the bluntness of her words. “I hear I cost you a fortune. Why’d you do it?”

The Director’s cigarette flared, and through the smoke his eyes were watchful. “Because you may very well be the only thing standing between humanity and the greatest threat of our brief existence.”

He turned from the window, and Shepard tracked him as he moved toward a chair in the center of the room. “You could have raised an army with what you spent on me. I’m just a soldier.”

“You’re valuable, Shepard.” He brushed his hand over the arm of the chair to bring up a haptic interface. Half a dozen screens flashed alight, streams of information flowing across their surface. The man dismissed them all with a small movement of his hand and sat down to regard her coolly. “Not only as a soldier, but as a resource. You activated the beacon on Eden Prime, and you have the Cipher. You spoke with Sovereign on Virmire, and with the Prothean VI on Ilos. Your knowledge may make all the difference in this war.”

Knowledge was a generous word for it. The impressions from the beacon were seared into her memory, a cacophony of the pain and horror of billions of dead souls. Armies clashed with legions of their own dead. Millennia old cities crumbled before the onslaught. Whole worlds burned as orbital bombardment set their atmospheres alight. Liara had told Shepard that the memories would linger, but neither of them could have imagined that they would last from one lifetime into the next.

“I don’t think you brought me back just to pick my brain about Reapers.” Shepard searched the man’s face for any kind of clue, any kind of tell, but found nothing. “You could have asked Liara T’soni. She was right there with me from the very beginning. She knows everything I know.”

“Even if she did have access to everything you know, Dr. T’soni cannot be trusted. She’s been working as an information broker on Illium, and may have ties to the Shadow Broker. If so, the Alliance cannot risk that sort of breach of information.”

Shepard scoffed. “That’s a little naïve, isn’t it? You don’t think the Shadow Broker hasn’t already infiltrated the Alliance?”

“Who do you think was behind the attack that so nearly cost you your life?” Maybe it was the light of the star passing over his face, but the man’s eyes seemed to flash in the darkness. “I can assure you that the Shadow Broker won’t find another foothold in our operation.”

“And that makes me feel so much better.”

He took another long drag from his cigarette, weighing his words. “You are right, though. There is more to this than your knowledge of the Reapers.” His eyes found hers, and Shepard could swear that he could see straight through her. “Your return will mean a great deal to humanity. The sole survivor of the siege on Akuze. The first human Spectre. The savior of the Citadel. You are a symbol of what humanity can accomplish.”

Shepard said nothing, and the silence was heavy with the weight of the man’s words. Shepard was just some Earthborn dirtbag. She was no savior, no hero. There was no misguided sense of honor behind her actions. She had joined the Alliance out of necessity – to start a new life. _God must have a sick sense of humor_ , she thought, _to have taken that so literally._

Of all the questions that roiled through her troubled mind, “why now?” was the one she managed to ask.

“We’re at war.” The Director ground out his cigarette. “The Council won’t admit it, but humanity is under attack. Entire colonies have been disappearing.” With a flick of his hand, a screen appeared. Images of empty colonies flashed across the surface – prefabs uninhabited, dinners half eaten, beds left unmade. “Human colonies.”

“And you believe the Reapers are involved,” Shepard finished.

“We believe it is someone working for the Reapers. Just as Saren and the geth aided Sovereign.”

Saren had been more machine than man when she had faced him in the Council chambers, a horrifying revenant of flesh and tech. Even with the battle raging all around them, the shot that took his life had rang out unnaturally loud, reverberating through the empty chamber. She remembered the way his impressive frame had crumpled, lifeless. And she remembered the way his corpse had rent itself open, muscles shearing and bones snapping as Sovereign assumed control of his shattered body.

Shepard wondered what Saren had thought, when he put that gun to his head. Had his life flashed before his eyes? Had he seen the man he used to be – the man that war had made and remade? When he pulled the trigger, was he thinking of the galaxy he thought he’d save? Was he thinking of the oath he had made, before the Reapers stole his mind? Did that bullet finally drive their voices from his head?

Thank you, he had said.

“The Alliance needs you, Shepard.” The Director was watching her, his face inscrutable. “Humanity needs you.”

Shepard flexed her ruined hand, clenched it into a tight fist. “Do I have a choice?”

He smiled at her, his blue eyes bright in the light of the raging sun. “You always have a choice, Shepard.”


End file.
